The Perfect Fit

– West Ham are on a 8 match unbeaten run in the Championship at the moment, but it has to be one of the least convincing unbeaten runs in football history, with just of those 3 of those 8 being victories. As a result, they have slipped out of the automatic promotion spots

– In the meantime, West Ham demigod Paolo di Canio is leading Swindon Town to an almost-inevitable promotion back into League 1. This is leading to calls at the Boleyn Ground for him to return there as manager in place of Sam Allardyce, who is making a hash of what should be a straight-forward project and doing it in a much less interesting way than is expected at one of England’s great footballing clubs

– Meanwhile, a couple of hundred miles north, Liverpool are struggling to achieve their aims in the league despite millions spent at the direction of Kenny Dalglish and Damien Comolli. But this is a project based on statistical analysis, the so-called “Moneyball method”, trying to find the right combination of players by looking at the numbers and seeing what works

Now, Sam Allardyce is a results man. He just wants to win, even if it means playing ugly or boring football. He also loves his statistical analysis.

Surely there’s an obvious shuffle to be made here. Allardyce not loved at West Ham for his methods. Liverpool struggling to implement the same methods Allardyce loves to use.

Yes, what I’m suggesting here is for Dalglish to step aside before doing further damage to his reputation, Big Sam to head north and get the big job he thinks he deserves, and West Ham to employ di Canio in his place. Everyone gets what they want.*

* – I should point out that I believe this to be only a temporary happiness as far as Liverpool are concerned, because I really don’t think their methods are going to get them anywhere. But at least they’ll have the right man for their inevitable failure – someone who fits the methods and then can be blamed for them at the end. And obviously this wouldn’t be very good for Swindon either, although they will at least get a bundle of cash and have plenty of available managers to choose from.

2 Responses

Using ‘Moneyball’ methods seems to have worked pretty well for Arsene Wenger in signing cheap talent. It’s interesting though that fans and the media have perpetuated the idea that Liverpool are actively buying players based solely on their statistics.